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The Temple of the Violet Lotus
Category:UtGS Manses The Temple of the Violet Lotus Aspect: Sidereal Rating: 3 In the Shore Lands of An-Teng lies the City of Dead Flowers, widely feared as a haunt for the dead and a habitation for the wicked. Shrines to the Pale Mistress stand on its boundaries in hopes that the death-goddess will stay her hand. Strange creatures writhe in the earth where canals once ran and dark blossoms hang from the broken roofs, thirsting for blood. Just outside the blighted area, on a windy hill, stands the Temple of the Violet Lotus, named for the purple water-lilies that grow in its sacred lake. Local people believe that if a handful of the violet petals are scattered over a person's grave, he will be protected, body and soul, from both the Pale Mistress and the terrors that reside in the nearby Shadowland. The staircase that leads up to the temple's main entrance faces Saturn's most northerly position in the sky. Also, a diagonal formed by the northeast and southwest corners of the building aligns with both the summer solstice sunrise and the winter solstice sunset. From the three narrow, high windows that admit light into the inner sanctum, the priests can see Saturn rising at its northern and southern extremes, as well as the equinox sunset. Here stands an altar to the Maiden of Endings, as well as her cult statue: the goddess is dark in color, robed in purple and four-armed. One arm brandishes a sword, another cradles a sheaf of wheat, a third lifts a blazing torch, and the fourth holds out a lotus. She is mounted on a great black bird; the priests disagree about whether it is a crow or a raiton. The temple itself is a sprawling structure of oddly-aligned corridors, eerily empty rooms and strange mirrors that do not always reflect the face of the person looking into them. Doors swing shut by themselves when no wind is blowing, and unescorted visitors always find themselves back at the entrance hall. Behind the temple is a small graveyard. There are no boundaries, and a family can place a new grave wherever it likes; the graveyard can be identified by the plantings of buckbrush, purple azaleas, foxgloves and irises. The graves are never marked with stones aboveground, but sometimes with a small carved cedar figure, and are often planted with one or more of the flowers mentioned above, which are cared for as long as survivors and descendants wish to keep the memory green. The cremation ground is in a hollow below the graveyard. The large, circular ground is kept clear of all grass and is stamped down and sown with salt yearly by the priests of Endings. Wood may be given and carried to the cremation ground by mourners, but only the priests stay at the cremation. Mourners, including family members, are directed to return home. An old sad song hints of this: I watch the smoke behind the ridge, the smoke rising and the rain falling. The priests who serve in the temple are forbidden to bear arms, but they have become adept at using unconventional weapons - sickles, pickaxes and even the spades with which they bury the dead - and their bare hands. Long meditations on the nature of Life and Death (and frequent communal meals of the seeds of the sacred lotus) have given them sufficient command of their own Essence to learn fighting styles normally practiced only by the Exalted. In addition, the priesthood encourages local God-Blooded and outcaste Dragon-Blooded to join its ranks. Deep in its dusty archives, the Temple of the Violet Lotus holds further wonders. Ancient tablets in the writing of the First Age tell of martial artists who shaped the stuff of dreams or called the night itself to their aid. Game Effects: Manse's rating of 3 x 2 + 3 for the weekly Maintenance of a three-hour rite in honor of the Maiden of Endings each Saturn's Day = 9 Creation Points. The Temple of the Violet Lotus is a Temple Manse to Saturn; its carefully planned architecture also makes it a Divine Observatory. Its extensive Archive of texts and magical training rooms grant an extra dot in unarmed fighting (Martial Arts specialty), fighting with polearms (Melee specialty) and dealing with the dead (Occult specialty). The labyrinth of Essence-blurred hallways function as Minor Tricks and Traps. The manse's hearthstone, a Precision of Form Gemstone, forms in the lotus in Saturn's hand.